WATER WORRIES Should our commercial bottled water companies both here and overseas pay for the resource…or are we just ticked off we didn’t think of it first? Kathryn Calvert takes a look at the issue. WHEN Okuru Enterprises registered a longheld interest to extract glacial water from Mt Aspiring National Park, pump it to the coast and then pipe onto waiting bulk water tankers off Neil’s Beach in South Westland, it opened a can of worms for the community. The company’s desire was simple…take enough water from the Awarata River to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool every 52 minutes – more than 27 Olympic pools every day – and send it to distant overseas markets desperate for our pure water… all without paying more than a pittance in resource rental and without public consultation. The backlash – already simmering at other revelations around the country of water companies extracting large volumes of pure New Zealand water for huge profits overseas – was quick. “New Zealanders care passionately about water, and want to be able to have their say on water grabs happening around our country before it is too late,” Green Party environmental spokesperson Eugenie Sage said, before launching a petition on the subject. “We shouldn’t be giving away New Zealand’s freshwater for free and without public consultation to private companies who are going to sell it overseas at a handsome profit,” she says. The fact that the water comes from the South West World Heritage Area – a place internationally recognised by UNESCO for its outstanding COVER STORY
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